What should happening? Well better procurement for a start, instead of getting picked off one-by-one by suppliers and consultancy companies, government bodies and local authorities should be getting together and telling the suppliers and consultants what the citizen wants and what their role might be in providing that, if they want the business.

Money is short now at the taxpayer level and if we are going to match that situation at a government level we’ll have to sharpen up process and outcome across the board and stop reinventing wobbly wheels! We can’t keep shelling out for every new technical fad and fashion or be expected to pay for the bloatware some suppliers sell us as software applications.

United we stand, divided we keep paying through the nose!

Andrea also picks up am interesting “Top ten for Gov 2.0 in 2009“. Government IT staff will appreciate number one!

He also provides a link to a more recent article of his on the politics of e-democracy entitled ”Would You Ask Turkeys to Mandate Thanksgiving? The Dismal Politics of Legislative Transparency“, published in the Spring 2009 issue of the Journal of Information Technology & Politics.  

I have little trouble agreeing with him having found e-democracy often sidelined, one way or the other, in the e-government debate by officials, politicials and academics. Some using e-democracy as a sales pitch for e-government, some the other way, whilst some just mix the two up. I continue to ask, as Snider does,
whether politicians are going to delegate power that easily!

If you are of a less cynical outlook you may be more appreciative of the new 388 page book from Stanford University “Online Deliberation: Design, Research, and Practice” from editors Todd Davies and Seeta Pena Gangadharan  (Creative Commons licensed) and its free for the PDF!

In his usual charming manner Michael highlights the ignorance of one minister just three years ago, but concludes that 13 years on from the Conservative Green Paper, something might finally happen. I suspect that 13 years is still too soon and Micahel is being optimistic, but what is the cause of his optimism? It’s the EU Ministerial Conference in Malmo, Sweden. For the UK, Bill McCluggage, John Suffolk’s deputy was talking about “A Future that is Efficient, Sustainable and Responsible.”

Andrea di Maio picks up the latest declatation on his blog and does his usual thorough analysis and ends up slightly confused as to where it stands with Gov 2.0, although I suspect for the UK this probably takes on the observation by Michael Cross as to which way we go next year after the election – there are, of course, at least two choices, open up the data or give it to the private sector to open up!

William Heath was also in attendance anf he praises Ton Zilstra’s summary of the event.

For me the key paragraphs are 15 and 17. The first has a list of criteria for earliest switchover where it is also stated that digital switchover means the ‘primary means of access, rather than one among many’, meaning that digital exclusion is alive and well in Digital Britain – in this instance for high volume, low complexity and efficiency (for the government).

The second states that there is a need to consider whether an online only or multi-channel approach is needed.

I wonder who will decide?

http://www.culture.gov.uk/what_we_do/broadcasting/6216.aspx

A year has gone by since the original survey and time for a refreshed one! I’ve learned my lesson about using Google, its a great application but blocked at many authorities. I’ve also tried to avoid some of the verbosity, but when operating in an academic environment semantics and ethics are all important, so there are some constraints.

Its still only a brief questionnaire, taking ten minutes at the most to complete, so please allow for all the ethical paraphenalia and respond. I’ll report back in an ongoing fashion through the blog and other forums, along with adding it to the academic output.

The survey is available above.

Even more contradictory was the lack of consideration for the Community Planning aspect of the Modernising Government agenda. I had discussed a joint piece of work with a regional university around examining citizens’ views of service delivery arrangements in parallel with views on meeting the electronic targets being attempted, but unfortunately pressures to meet the targets didn’t leave enough time to carry out the research further.

Following the target deadline I breathed a sigh of relief and was left attempting to embed the learning of the last few years with providing services in the manner wanted by the citizen. At this point I attempted again to consider the research and contacted a university that had a history of work in local government, digital inclusion and electronic voting, De Montfort, with a research proposal, which was accepted! Unfortunately or fortunately I was then seriously ill but the period of rest and recuperation gave me time to focus on reading and the the reading distracted me from the gravity of my situation.

The reading indicated that very little academic work had still been done on e-government and that studies by the likes of Gartner Research had revealed some quite complex systems for measuring electronic service delivery that were probably only fit for national governments. What was also revealed was a long running debate as to whether government was dealing with customers or citizens, with most of the votes in favour of calling the people a government deals with citizens, this included the Government of Canada supporting the move. Another long running piece of work review ended up around assessing customer satisfaction, which along with measuring the gap between expectation and delivery, has seen a great number of papers published but no great conclusions made.

The recent favourite approach in business is to employ customer engagement measurement rather than customer relationship management and this I conclude is a viable approach, which is that by pushing for and collating feedback from all customers, which, in the context of government, I prefer to call citizens, across all channels, we can try  to improve issues in end-to-end services by correcting them using the feedback.

We still have a long way to go in channel management and  I think citizen engagement management is a move in the right direction, it will also assist in both avoiding digital exclusion issues along with creating quality services, It was also the approach I took when I created the blog http://greatemancipator.com, in order to discuss these issues and promote them amongst practitioners. Academic research tends to be focused on learn-ed conferences, very wordy and expensive journals, so my approach of sticking the outcomes under the nose of anyone interested and asking for their participation seemed a sensible approach.

In the New Year I intend to have another survey along with starting a series of interviews with particularly appropriate individuals. Any volunteers or suggestions?

Season’s greetings and a prosperous new year to everyone!

National Indicator 14 – avoidable contact - this was the first draft!

Measure for measure - a look at metrics internationally

World Wide Web Consortium - some new reports

January 2008

Satisfaction Canadian Style - a look at some of the excellent Canadian work

Satisfaction is high on the agenda - publications from the LGA, NCC and New Statesman

Irish Lessons - a report from Ireland

February 2008

NI14 – the drama continues - version 2 of the draft national standard!

March 2008

NI14 version 3 and a homage to Catalonia - NI14 version 3 and a report back from a Spanish-flavoured conference

Wanting what the customer wants - NWEGG report on citizen need

Public Value, Social Capital & other fun metrics - a trawl through the terminology!

Customer Unfocused - excellent Richter & Cornford paper

Delivering Efficiency - a new DCLG report

April 2008

Is there a public service ethic? Some academic views

Great E-mancipator survey as PDF - for those who can’t Google!

Customer Need and Public Service - philosophy gets dragged in!

A Theory of Parsimonious E-government Management - the theory!

14th April 1865 - why and what the Great Emancipator

Annual Research Report - what it says on the label!

Feeding back - from the launch of the SURVEY

History repeating itself - my abstract for Ethicomp 2008 at Mantua, Italy

Satisfaction? responding to Pete - a dialogue develops

Re: Pete but not a repeat - a response to a comment

E-government bulletin - a piece published in the same communication

May 2008

Public value and satisfaction - Mark H Moore

Channel migration – response to another comment

Targets, metrics and dissatisfaction – what happens when citizens aren’t happy?

Initial feedback to Great E-mancipator survey - a summary!

Systems thinking, control charts and philosophy - more philosophy and history

A summary of some recent posts on the UK e-democracy network - what it says

June 2008

Why government IT fails - a link to an article

Change and channels - a comment from Glyn Evans

Satisfaction - another meeting

Customer insight – an online conference - with the Cabinet Office

Systems thinking, balanced scorecards and satisfaction - they can work together

Scorecards, systems, Canada and Australia - examining thinking

Customer What? – a debate with cabinet Office

Old Whine in New Bottles - picking up on PINpoint from the IPF

Feedback from Brendan - a blogger at the IPF

Yardsticking! – better than benchmarks

July 2008

Computer Weekly blog awards - I’m shortlisted!

NI14 Guidance released - from the IDeA

NI14 - the new moneypit for suppliers

Tail wagging dog - another go at NI14

Bread and circuses - customers versus citizens

Some of July’s literature findings

Customer first! – findings on NI14 from the north east

A month by month guide to what’s been blogged – THIS!

August 2008

IDeA NI14 Guidance and GovMetric

Channel usage and strategy - updating my thoughts!

Customer insight guidance - whats happening at the IDeA

Semantics, semiotics and sophistry - having been told once too many times ‘its all semantics.’

Citizen oriented architecture - A new name for the model!

Which community - which communities are you a member of in your neighbourhood?

Computer Weekly blog awards - the sad news…

Inclusive transformation - a report from EURIM sounds positive!

September 2008

Researching Local Government, Web 2.0 and Service-oriented architecture - the future (perhaps?)

Conference call! - presenting research in London

The Invisible Hand? – mashups or intelligent agents?

Further feedback to the invisible hand - some comments!

Between rocks and hard places - invisible hand versus data security

The Public Office - a new Whitehall novelty

Rock on Canada - reading Canadian e-government

So, what’s the vision? – employing experience

Measuring what matters! – Australia adopts the Canadian CMT

The ‘invisible hand’ writes on… - more thoughts on XML and its uses

October 2008

Social inclusion and digital exclusion - a European report on English e-government

Promises, pledges and satisfaction - debating some more options

A history lesson! – looking back to a forecast from 2000…

The Bandwagon Effect - consumerism’s effect on service delivery!

Some questions about anchoring expectations - how do we measure the gap?

I before E – systems thinking and digital inclusion

Who is doing what in local government - is the network joined up?

Another model, but flawed – the Chester model

What do we do about sharing data? – the Conservative manifesto…

November 2008

Scotland seeks satisfaction - citizen satisfaction, the Scot’s approach

London calling! Revisiting NI14 - a report from Tower 08.5

Getting to Gemba - resorting to systems thinking

Getting egged on! - Report from the EiP conference

Satisfaction counts! – a newly discovered software supplier (and in the UK).

California dreaming - an interesting paper from the USA

Viewing the market - a brief look at system suppliers

Sayonara satisfaction - a link to another blog’s visit to an amazing Japanese company

Going critical! – Heidegger meets the IDeA

Being insightful - a very brief review of the ‘insight’ report

December 2008

Citizen Engagement Exchange - a revision of the model

NI14 back in the news? – some recent research

Citizen or consumer – command & control? - David Marquand revisited

NI 14 Paying the piper - more stuff on NI14!

Activity based recharging - are we economic with the economics?

Gartner – right again! More on metrics and engagement.

News from the USA - the Federal Web Managers’ white paper

NI14 – update to the guidance - 2 page update from the CabO

Wise words from Oz - A new Australian e-government report

Why bother? - a look back at the research

January 2009

How NOT to use feedback! Why the Minister is wrong.

East or west, no-one answers! A report from China

Having second thoughts! In support of Goodhart’s Law

Honesty is the best policy! Statistics in the news

Au Revoir NPM - A paper by Michael Duggett

Co-production - a report from Compass

Co-production – part 2 - an article in the latest Public Money & Management

Behind the Vanguard - a new essay from Prof. John Seddon

What have I just been saying? a recent academic paper from Surrey

Accentuate the positive! the latest Accenture report

February 2009

Digital Britain - a new report from DCMS and BERR

The power of information - latest news from Steinberg, Vanguard, et al

A good moan - a new piece on mycustomer.com

S*d it! - a slave to the Internet

Happy birthday - an homage to Charles & Abraham

Get real Read! - Government IT gets it in the neck, again.

Oysters and pearls - creative dissatisfaction

World Wide Web Consortium - news from nowhere

A new job? – a vacancy at Whitehall

Making contact with NI14 - update on the research and an online debate

March 2009

I Googled ‘twitter’ and ‘e-government’ - and found enlightenment, well almost!

Why don’t you listen? Two newish publications.

Web 2, yoof and snouts in the trough - how not to do new media

Paper in the pipeline - new research paper on its way

A paradox we can’t work with? An interesting academic editorial

The many angles of multichannel service - looking at an option from MyCustomer.com

New thinking - reading Gerry McGovern’s latest newsletter

Triumph of the will - the model and some papers from ‘clicktools‘

Complaining culture - turning complaints into an artform

Get Carter - Ofcom versus Digital Britain

Andrea strikes again - EU blue sky thinking

Laddering Participation - forty years on

April 2009

Social s(t)igma - another idea on MyCustomer.com

What is e-government for? – Is is just a channel or are we wanting to engage?

Evidence base - latest Gerry McGovern blog

Get satisfaction - more on satisfaction and pledges

Good complaint handling - a ‘how to’ guide

Great Emancipator II - the second annual survey

publicexperience - had a bad one?

You can’t win! – MP slags off DVLA

A private sector experience - what we learnt on our holiday

Operational efficiency - what can we read into the Treasury report?

May 2009

What I’d expected - initial results from the survey

Need and satisfaction - news from Chorley

No place to be - the value of the Place survey?

How to complain - another personal experience

Off target - lots of moans about target regimes

Good Planning - what makes a good planning web site?

Guidance & metrics - still not a lot of deep thinking…

NI14 – the latest! IDeA keep us posted

Complaining again - advice about complaints

Citizen-consumers - digging in the library

June 2009

Expenses anyone? – a role for e-government

Researchers in the dark - Parity in the press

More on Parity - the report in the flesh

What shall we do? – a view from the week’s events

How many visitors? – discussing web site stats

Digital self-exclusion - a new Ofcom report by Mori

Getting overfocused on the tools - wasting money?

Don’t count on empowerment - a report from the CLG

Watmore’s wisdom - last words from the former CIO

The Final Report - from Carter

July 2009

Return to Canada - after a trip to ECEG2009

The Tory Take - considering things after an election

Web 2.0 and benchmarking - more from Gartner

Channel accounting - can we have a cost per channel?

Contrasting opinions - Who is right about Post Offices?

Listening to the front line - a new report from the Cabinet Office

Metrified - GovMetric go public

Getting Techie - listening to Tim Berners-Lee

World Class - yet another Cabinet Office report…

New blogger on the street! John Suffolk joins the crowd

August 2009

Consuming ourselves - another McKinsey report starts some thinking

Service quality and efficiency - MP’s ask questions, again…

Citizenomics - comparing costs and productivity

Interim survey results - NI14 rather wasted on us

Measuring the email mountain - Considering the President’s inbox

Developing e-government - advice from India

Foresight - a new report on the US

Optimization Techniques - how customers measure

Analysis Paralysis - IBM’s latest idea

Electronic government costs - in N.Ireland

September 2009

Effect of central on local - Is this what the CLG wants to hear?

Mistaken conclusions - Demos barking up a wrong tree?

Follow the leader - new report from the Sunningdale Institute

Channel Strategy - news and views from the Cabinet Office

In these hard times - looking at the Tory alternative

E-government dependencies - To Web 2.0 or not

Another survey - this one from the Oxford Internet Institute

US government web sites - a up-to-the-minute study

Why we need to involve the “local” end users - not just “other” cultures

October 2009

Engaged in the USA - some ways to approach citizens

Blogging about other bloggers’ blogs - some lessons from history

E-governancing - why Accenture agree with this blogger!

Will e-government be different? – back to the academic literature on e-government

Minister for e-government - Angela’s back!

Digital conclusion - Martha’s report

Beatcounters – beancounters getting it wrong?

User-centred approaches to e-Government - latest from the OECD

Public service? – it’s a culture thing!

November 2009

Disinfecting the swamp - thinking about “open gov”

Foressing the future - the Q3 report from Foresee

Analogues of service - Kevin Carey in GC Magazine

Citizen Issues - asking them what they think of service?

Reasons to be cheerful - G2010 in the news

Jobcentre + A qualitative analysis of the dole offices

E-Parliament - will it be virtually any better?

E-government back in the news! – Malmo in the news

Benchmarking the mire - Dissing Capgemini

Happiness – is it the same as satisfaction?

December 2009

Back to academy - Papers by Winner and Hirschman

Open strategy - leaking a leaked leak

Don’t get carried away - liberating the UK’s mapping data?

Frontline first - new website/report from the Cabinet Office

Governing IT - a report from the Institute for Government

Looking east - a report from Booz

E-democracy – e-government: e-democracy or e-deliberation

NDL - the sixth NDL-Metascybe integration and CRM report

Co-production again - a new report from NESTA

Measuring Social Media - looking at a few methods

January 2010

Gov 2.0 again - a Christmas message from Andrea di Maio

The case is adjourned – Philip Virgo’s blog

Social media analytics - Avinash Kaushik’s thoughts on them

Going native - what to do with social media natives?

A new start - picking on Deloitte!

Improving service - Socitm’s turn to be picked on!

Benchmarking the nations - what’s the point?

Zettabytes – how Americans consume information

Going continental - Pan-European E-services

The final edition? – Government ICT Strategy

February 2010

Social Media News - it’s there on the news stands

Satisfaction levels out - the latest Foresee report

Social media as a channel - a report from Right Now

Accountability – a report from Localis

The engagement ethic - a report from the Innovation Unit

Passive democracy - The Hansard Society considers social media

New Horizons - when is e-government achieved?

Transparency – web site transparency equates to trust in government?

Low usage of e-services - a tale from Korea

Smarter public services - IBM advertises in New Statesman!

March 2010

Crossroads – where we’re at with e-democracy

Digital participation - following on from Digital Britain

Poor relations - broadband coverage in USA not dissimilar to UK

Community work - a report from PwC and the IPPR

Democratic participation - An academic view of e-participation in the EU.

Varieties of Participation - a paper by Fung

What really matters - another Accenture report

Tailored technology - thoughts from CIO’s in the USA

Social mediating - another report from NESTA

Focus not thrills - Andrea di Maio and Martha Lane Fox

Cultural shift - Ipsos MORI and the new Total Place report

A week in politics - burying NI14 and resurrecting the E-government Unit?

April 2010

April fool - wondering who Sir Peter is working for now?

NI14 is dead, long live parsimony! – promoting the model

Staring across the pond - comparative US and UK views

Be my muse - pondering automated social media and Gov 2.0

The twittering parties - Hansard Society and Sitemorse publications

Web (ab)users - some thoughts on usability and accessibility

Lost in Spain - literally!

E-government and sex - first report about Ethicomp 2010

E-government and the volcano - could e-government have made life easier?

Keeping mum - social media and the election

E-government united - the UN report finally appears

May 2010

Efficiency savings - another doubter

What’s the use of benchmarks - Pew Internet survey

What’s the use of satisfaction – Foresee compared with Pew

E-election mania - what next ID cards for voting?

Semantic, semantics – Pew report on the semantic web

Multi-channel engagement - a Belgian academic revelation

Multi-channel engagement – Part 2 – Some studies from the Netherlands

Multi-channel engagement – Part 3 – Recent research from Sweden

Good government – Local, central and open

Europe calling! - A Digital Agenda for Europe

To the e-barricades! – EDEM10 conference opinions

Voice of the Customer - measuring Gov 2.0 buzz

Who leads Gov 2.0 - A question from David Osimo

June 2010

Horses for courses – Andrea’s visit to the World Congress

Adios CAA – Good riddance to poor measures

The paradigm trap – research from Malaysia

Researching digital government – an aid to researchers

UN-decided – the 2012 UN e-government survey

Opening the vaults – the coalition’s approach to open data

Scots wae hae – Scotland launches citizen satisfaction measuring

Not bovvered - A personal experience of poor customer service…

Island of dreams - the latest from Singapore

Building the better web site – a presentation on GovLoop

Holiday reading - a raft of publications from the 2020 Public Services Trust

The cutting floor - slashing government websites

July 2010

Insight in place - LGDC on Total Place and customer insight

Local 2 – another report on social media in local government

Where’s Watmore? – Ian’s back!

Gartner Open Government model - some open data thoughts

Social viability – an interesting report from Intel

Governing Electronically - a new book by Paul Henman

The technicist manifesto - a response to MLF

The opening of Australia - Open data in Australia

Gov 2.0 in Germany - Another Schellong paper

Out of focus – a review of focus groups

The maturing Internet – users are getting older!

Portuguese e-government - what’s happening there

My review of the literature had only revealed some complicated metrics as listed by Andrea di Maio and others, and targets such as National Indicator NI14. Along with that, having been managing an e-government programme I despised the Best Value Performance Indicator 157 and Priority Service Outcomes that had been the targets in England, they were of little value to the public!

I’d picked up the feelings that more recent reviews, such as the Irish lesson pointed to measures and also that customer satisfaction had a big role to play.

Companies like rol have proposed solutions such as govmetric and I think they’re getting there. My approach is to inhibit the use of targets and a pure reliance upon positive or negative feedback is the answer, and what I want from my suggested model.

If a customer/citizen (and there is a lot of debate about how we should view them, including the Cornford/Richter one) is satisfied or otherwise they indicate and leave feedback as to why. The feedback is used to improve the systems…

Simply that – satisfied/dissatisfied – if so, why? We’ll do something about it! Of course, we still need to measure usage of channels, all the channels, but with usage and satisfaction a great deal can be done to improve the service.

The next development is to cater for the customers that aren’t banging upon the door of any channels. Need, as per NWEGG, is one way but improving and simplifying access may stop us pushing the door from the other side?

To collate on an ongoing basis feedback across all channels. The idea is not to have any sort of scale of satisfaction, just satisfied or dissatisfied and the relevant feedback. The feedback is used to adjust, improve or develop that channel.

This is not an attempt to steer the public down cheaper (for the provider) routes but to get satisfactory service across all, which will encourage them to use the most convenient (for them) on that particular occasion. For some services this may require action across several channels, and even repeat visits, but that will be down to the service required.

There is no target! If its a wasted visit, no doubt the reason for dissatisfaction will be used to improve matters for the next customer.

I realise that GovMetric is similar – good! This isn’t an attempt to steal it but to promote a customer/citizen focused alternative to things like National Indicator 14 (avoidable contact).

My major concern is that we still haven’t responded to need, to the customers who can’t or won’t leave feedback, to the ones who can’t find the door, phone number or website or don’t want to…

The next challenge is a Parsimonious Theory of Harvesting and Managing Customer Need…

Anu suggestions?